New partnerships with Latin America for Double Degree agreements at PhD level
Politecnico di Torino hosted a workshop focused on the development of Double Degree agreements at PhD level, featuring eight faculty members from five prestigious Latin American partner universities located in three of the region’s most significant countries: Brazil, Chile, and Colombia.
The initiative is part of the PNRR Transnational Education project HerIT4Future funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) and focused on strengthening the collaboration with Latin American universities.
The project is coordinated by Università di Bologna, with Politecnico di Torino responsible for Work Package 9 – Energy for the Future, under the scientific leadership of professor Roberto Zanino from the Department of Energy “Galileo Ferraris” (DENERG) – President of the Magalhães network and Rector’s Senior Advisor for International University Networks and the European University Alliance Unite!.
Professor Roberto Zanino declared: “This workshop successfully crowns a process which was initiated in August 2025 with the Workshop on PoliTo–LAC Collaboration on Energy PhD, held at Universidad de Chile, and continued in November 2025 with the Advanced Skills Course held at Politecnico di Torino, on Sustainable Energy Transition: PoliTo–Latin America Collaboration towards Joint PhD Initiatives. Combining bottom-up efforts from the side of the researchers with top-down engagement of the management of different PhD Schools proved to be a good approach. We hope this will further strengthen the collaboration between Politecnico di Torino and these important universities not only on the PhD but also in Research and Innovation at large, while at the same time constituting a model which could be replicated involving further European and Latin American Universities from the Magalhães network”.
WP9 activities have been entirely oriented towards strengthening doctoral-level collaborations with several of the partner institutions participating in the initiative.
The universities involved in this workshop, all partners of both the HerIT4Future project and the Magalhães Network, are: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia), Universidad de Chile (Chile), Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil), Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil), and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).
Although initially focused on energy engineering, the activities were subsequently extended to all engineering fields, thereby broadening opportunities for collaboration.
During the workshop, faculty members took part in institutional meetings with professor Stefano Grivet-Talocia, Director of the Doctoral School, and with the PhD Programmes Hub, aimed both at initiating new negotiations and at finalizing agreements already at an advanced stage, as in the case of Universidad de Chile and Universidade de São Paulo, with whom the signing of agreements is expected in the coming months.
“Internationalization of PhD Programmes is one of the most important strategic objectives of the Doctoral School of Politecnico di Torino. – commented professor Grivet Talocia – Bilateral PhD student exchanges under Double Degree programs represent a first step that may lead to structured research collaborations with partner universities. This is why the Doctoral School is putting major efforts in developing framework agreements with strategic partners like the Latin American universities that visited Politecnico di Torino for this workshop. Negotiations were very successful during the meetings; we are now looking forward to the implementation phase and to the first cohort of PhD candidates that will travel under these Double Degree programs”.
The programme also included meetings with PoliTO’s coordinators of doctoral programmes across different scientific areas, as well as visits to PoliTO laboratories, organized by the programme coordinators themselves. These activities were intended to strengthen the relations among the academic communities involved and to create the conditions for the future implementation of the agreements currently under development.
In the words of professor Marcio Lobo Netto, who was representing the Universidade de São Paulo at the workshop as President of the International Relations Committee of its Escola Politécnica, and who is also member of the Steering Committee of the Magalhães Network: “I am proud to be part of this group, that through meetings and visits got a deeper insight on their high-quality education, and outstanding facilities and laboratories. The main goal was to discuss double degrees at doctoral level between our universities, in line with one of the objectives of the Magalhães Network—currently under the presidency of Politecnico di Torino. In this context, we were able to discuss on a bilateral basis the procedures to establish such cooperation including an advanced preparation of the agreements to guide it. It is worth mentioning that such an initiative aims to establish an institutional framework, making the process to admit doctoral students in this program easier and faster. The long-term and successful cooperation between these institutions on Bachelor/Master level on student exchange, including double degrees, played an important role here. I am confident that it will lead to a stronger cooperation between professors from both sides, while contributing to a high-level formation of new engineering doctors”.
